Modernization through Past: Cultural Heritage during the late Ottoman and the early-Republican period in Turkey: compte rendu de l’ouvrage de Mesut Dinler “Modernization through Past: Cultural Heritage during the late Ottoman and the early-Republican period in Turkey”, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 2019

This review sheds light on Dinler's work regarding modernisation through the past, offering valuable insights into the geopolitical importance of heritage, placemaking, and nation-building, as well as architecture, in the Turkish cultural context. While several studies have explored the connection between heritage, place, architecture, and political issues, there is a limited understanding of the geopolitical impact on heritage and architectural materiality (Lushnikova, 2016). Eisenmann's (1995) insights on the 'critical' concept in geopolitics, which are centred on the management of the potential for 'being', referencing Kant and Piranesi and focusing on 'being' in architecture, are instructive. The application of this idea in various fields such as heritage and 'modernism' demonstrates the numerous aspects of 'being' in a geopolitical setting (Scruton, 1997)

Communication of cultural heritage through performing art: theatre and memories of Former Mental Asylums

Traditional theatre performances contain many other arts such as singing, acting, and dancing, consisting of diverse design processes including masks, costumes, people, stories, and place settings. They are perfect examples of synthesis of arts that create a perfect dialogue between space and body helping people to feel, empathize, and experience the culture, history, and the place for themselves and others. This paper discusses the power of theatre as a 'total art' to communicate difficult memories and tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The former mental hospitals and mental illness in history are problematic heritage contents in terms of valorization and communication, and they become a challenge requiring new and creative strategies to share with citizens. Besides, most of these huge heritage complexes have become completely or partially abandoned and stigmatized due to their recent past. Starting with the power of theater performances in communication, the paper focuses on research-based theatre as an artistic methodology in heritage communication and its appropriateness to be applied in marginal unspoken memories. ‘Chille de la Balanza', an Italian Florence-based theatre collective, and their performances dedicated to Italian former lunatic hospitals as the places of human marginalization and containment, and their works related to mental illness as unsettling parts of history with a varied number of individual testimonies and unspoken difficult memories, will be discussed to show the success of theatre in heritage communication

Rethinking the Industrial Heritage of Ayvalik through Trajectories on Extracting Olive Oil and Soap Making

Ayvalik, a city located in northwest Anatolia, has been at the forefront of olive-based industries since the 1880s, when the industrialization of Europe led to the growth of commerce and agriculture in Anatolia, including first Istanbul and Izmir, followed by Ayvalik, due to their strategic locations. Ayvalik, which was an important Greek settlement under Ottoman rule, experienced a major turning point with the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, an event that caused dramatic changes in the political, demographic, and economic structure of all of Anatolia. Nonetheless, Ayvalik has maintained its importance through its ongoing olive-based industries and well-preserved historical urban fabric, the likes of which represents one of an exceptional example of living testimony of continuing land-use by Turks. Following the relocation of industrial activities in the 1980s, many of the industrial heritage buildings became non-functional, while half of them were converted into different culturaltouristic sites in the 2000s. This study presents a comprehensive view of the industrial heritage of Ayvalik by performing an up-to-date synthesis of the cultural material related to trajectories on industry and production processes to understand the evolution of the industrial heritage and how urban and daily life have been reflected and transformed

Transformation Process of Industrial Heritage Places; Case Study: Northern Industrial Zone of Ayvalık, Turkey

Ayvalık is a pioneer settlement in Western Anatolia with an olive-based industry since its establishment. 'Ayvalık Industrial Landscape' is defined by a specific geography which accepted on the tentative list of UNESCO in 2017 as an outstanding example of social and economic structure of 19th-century industry based on olive oil production in Western Anatolia. During the development of Ayvalık as an industrial center in 19th-century, introduction of the factory buildings with large program that are mostly located in the northern industrial zone along the coastline for taking an advantage of sea water and being closer to the port, was the main impact to the urban settlement pattern of Ayvalık. However, due to fast technological developments, changes in production systems and relocation of the industrial activities, industrial heritage buildings have remained as reminders of their times. Although some of them have converted into new uses, they usually lost their functions which caused a large stock of derelict industrial buildings within the city center. The aim of this paper is to discuss the transformation process of northern industrial zone of Ayvalık by re-reading the current state of the northern industrial zone in order to find the principles and strategies for the conservation of industrial heritage of Ayvalık according to its indigenous values, potentials and new demands

Portable Microfluidic Integrated Plasmonic Platform for Pathogen Detection

Timely detection of infectious agents is critical in early diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases. Conventional pathogen detection methods, such as enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), culturing or polymerase chain reaction (PCR) require long assay times, and complex and expensive instruments, which are not adaptable to point-of-care (POC) needs at resource-constrained as well as primary care settings. Therefore, there is an unmet need to develop simple, rapid, and accurate methods for detection of pathogens at the POC. Here, we present a portable, multiplex, inexpensive microfluidic-integrated surface plasmon resonance (SPR) platform that detects and quantifies bacteria, i.e., Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) rapidly. The platform presented reliable capture and detection of E. coli at concentrations ranging from ~105 to 3.2 × 107 CFUs/mL in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) and peritoneal dialysis (PD) fluid. The multiplexing and specificity capability of the platform was also tested with S. aureus samples. The presented platform technology could potentially be applicable to capture and detect other pathogens at the POC and primary care settings

Characterization of greater middle eastern genetic variation for enhanced disease gene discovery

The Greater Middle East (GME) has been a central hub of human migration and population admixture. The tradition of consanguinity, variably practiced in the Persian Gulf region, North Africa, and Central Asia1-3, has resulted in an elevated burden of recessive disease4. Here we generated a whole-exome GME variome from 1,111 unrelated subjects. We detected substantial diversity and admixture in continental and subregional populations, corresponding to several ancient founder populations with little evidence of bottlenecks. Measured consanguinity rates were an order of magnitude above those in other sampled populations, and the GME population exhibited an increased burden of runs of homozygosity (ROHs) but showed no evidence for reduced burden of deleterious variation due to classically theorized ‘genetic purging’. Applying this database to unsolved recessive conditions in the GME population reduced the number of potential disease-causing variants by four- to sevenfold. These results show variegated genetic architecture in GME populations and support future human genetic discoveries in Mendelian and population genetics

Banned word: the 'uranium'

We would not have known the reason behind the nebulous meanings and definitions of wismut in Bad Schlema in Saxony region, if we would not meet a man in the Uranium Museum (Uranbergbau, The Museum of Uranium mining). This story might also enlighten you about the origins of the name of Wismut Company in East Germany, which is still active in the region for the current industrial activities. Wismut is the German word referring to bismuth, which is a chemical element with the symbol of Bi